Everyone has a hard time when they’ve got the builders in and the British Museum is no exception. Problems with the stone supplied for the rebuilding of the south portico notwithstanding, on Thursday the museum’s Queen Elizabeth II Great Court will open to the public. The £100million development, designed by Foster and Partners, transforms the space surrounding the former Round Reading Room of the British Library into a vast, covered public piazza and provides space for the new Clore Eduction Centre (scheduled to open next year). Previously only accessible to those with a coveted reader’s ticket, the restored nineteenth century reading room, which rises through the centre of the billowing bagel-shaped steel and glass canopy enclosing the court, is to become a new, free reference library. See Major museums